Trinity Sunday, Year B, Second Reading (Romans 8:14-17)

¹⁴ For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. ¹⁵ The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry,  “Abba,  Father.” ¹⁶ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. ¹⁷ Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

This Sunday is Trinity Sunday, and so, not surprisingly, all three readings reveal to us important aspects of the triune nature of God. This passage from Romans tells us about the working of the Trinity, and our relationship to it. To begin with, the incarnation of the Second Person, the Son, in Jesus revolutionizes our own relationship with God whom we can now address as “Abba”. Most Jews certainly would not have addressed God this way for, although respectful, the term showed intimacy. But Christians found themselves calling God “Abba” when they prayed which they would not have done on their own initiative. They did so because the Spirit inspired them to, and so the three persons work together to bring us closer to God. Because of Jesus, God is in some special way our Father, and we are in some special way, his children.

Under Jewish law, adoption was very simple for a man who only had to call a child “my son” or “my daughter” in front of two witnesses. Here the two witnesses are the Spirit and our own spirit who testify to the act of adoption that makes us children of God. Because of this, we now share the inheritance of Christ, the natural Son of God. We have done nothing to deserve this adoption for it is a freely given act of grace. But because of it, we no longer have to fear God, for, as Paul tells us in verse 15, the Spirit makes us his children not his slaves.

Of course, Paul tells us at the end of this passage, that we are entitled to be Jesus’ sisters and brothers only if we also share his sufferings. To be a child of God does not mean we will escape from pain on this earth for like Jesus we must suffer and die before we can rise to glory. As James Dunn wrote in his book on Romans: “sonship brings a new dimension to the starkness of life and death and helps make the present suffering more bearable while enhancing the hope of future glory.”